


Desert Road

by shadowkeeper



Category: The Good the Bad the Weird, The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8258431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkeeper/pseuds/shadowkeeper
Summary: The man who is now Billy Rocks opens his eyes and expected to see bright blue skies.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, about 8 years ago, Lee ByungHyun was in a Korean western called The Good, the Bad, the Weird, playing a rocker styled hitman who’s pretty great with knives. Considering that the trailers for the Magnificent Seven labeled Billy as an assassin, I couldn’t help wondering _what if Billy was Chang-yi?_ Nevermind the ending of either/both/neither movies.
> 
> There’s a bit of a timeline issue- Magnificent Seven is supposed to take place in 1879, and The Good, The Bad and the Weird in 1939. But this is fic world, and plot doesn’t hinge on the year, so there’s some hand-waving. It all takes place in a nebulous western looking historical world. 
> 
> Won’t need to have seen The Good, The Bad, and the Weird for the fic to make sense, but it’s a great fun movie so I’d recommend it.

The man who is now Billy Rocks opens his eyes and expected to see bright blue skies. 

The sensation of déjà vu, mostly a specific sort of pain that comes with bullet holes, didn’t match up to the dim wooden ceiling that blurrily comes into focus, and it takes him a moment to make sense of where he is. A weak grope at his shoulder, and he feels moderately tight wrappings. 

They must have won, judging by the bandages.

Trying not to groan, Billy slowly shifts up from the cot to a sitting position, pushing bone deep weariness aside for the moment as he looks around, moving mostly just his eyes. He’s in an open-door shed, maybe late afternoon, and a few feet to his left in the small space is another cot holding Goodnight, lying swaddled in bandages including around half his face, unmoving and quiet.

Billy didn’t know if some part of him relaxed or tensed up to see Goody still breathing, shallowly, silently, unconscious. There’s a rustle outside and by the time Billy turns his head to look towards the door area, Mrs. Cullen's standing there looking surprised. 

“I didn’t realize you were awake. The doctor said it might take a few more days.” She pauses for a moment as Billy focuses on her, then offers a tentative smile.

“Do you need anything?”

Billy takes stock of himself for a moment, muddling through the haze in his head and feeling for what had woken him up besides the pain.  
“Chamber pot?” His tongue feel heavy and he can’t tell if he’d gotten the words out right, so he adds in a vague gesture towards his thighs. She seems to understand.

“It’s just in the corner there, behind your cot. Not too far.” Emma hefts the bundle she’s been carrying, then almost awkwardly asks, “Would you like some help?”

Billy slowly pushes himself to his feet. He feels the stitches in his flesh and his head still clouded with pain, but he finds his balance and tests his legs. He could walk on his own, unlike last time when he had a bullet hole in his thigh and had to half crawl through the desert. _It had felt like he had crawled for days._ Three bullets to the torso feel manageable.

“I’ll be fine.”

He hears Emma rustle out of the doorway as he starts to move, stagger, towards the darker corner behind the cot he woke on. He fumbles with his clothes and it takes him longer than an age to relieve himself, but eventually he’s shuffling back around the cot. Sitting back down meant another slow process of bending just far enough to skirt the edge of new fresh pain, but by the time he makes it, Emma reappears in the shed. She’d set her bundle down somewhere and has a pitcher and a couple mugs instead. She pours him a small amount of water and sets the pitcher on a crate within Billy’s arm’s reach with small smile at his “Thank you.”

“No need for that. Doctor said he’d come by in the morning.” She speaks quietly, darting a glance off to the other cot, and with one last check to see if Billy needs anything, else, she slips back out into the slowly darkening afternoon.

Billy takes a good long look at Goodnight, counting the breaths rising and falling slowly in Goody’s chest, before he pulls his feet up onto the cot and slowly lies back. 

The last time Billy had woken up with bullet holes, he’d cared, more. Hadn’t he?

*-*-*

Goodnight first saw the scars back when they were first getting comfortably friendly, some hot day when they’d stumbled across a creek too tempting to pass by. Billy had pulled his vest and shirt off, slashing water on himself to cool down when he heard a slow whistle, pushed out through teeth. 

Billy didn’t need to look up to see what had caught Goody’s attention. The starbursting healed skin littering his torso was obvious in the bright day.

“Didn’t think any man could get a drop on you. Seems there’s bigger and badder in the world.”

Billy snorted on his exhale. His English was still in development and he understood more words than he could say, but he understood Goodnight more often than not.

“Two men. Mexican standoff.” Billy’s learnt the phrase recently- didn’t know why such face-offs were ‘Mexican’, but liked the shortcut of the explanation.

“Couldn’t even put you down.”  
Goody looked impressed, hadn’t pressed further, let the day’s traveling go by easily in pleasant company. It was at night, cool breeze settling in comfortably, two men sprawled around a fire smoking up at the stars.

“How does a man survive something like that?”

Billy rolled his head over to look at Goody, momentarily puzzled by the question considering their last topic of conversation had been quick draw techniques. Goody used his foot to nudge towards Billy’s torso and- ah. Billy took a long draw from his cigarette as he turned his head back to face the stars.

The answer that felt the truest was rage. 

He’d somehow woken up in that desert, alone, bleeding, singed for some strange reason, and every ounce of rage and hate in him propelling him back across the sand. If he could survive, heal, he could kill those bastards. He managed to not collapse until he’d found a doctor to do it in front of. 

He’d come to a week later, grasped for ever-familiar anger to _get him out bed_ and found an empty well. 

“Luck. And 9 millimeter bullets make small holes.”  
Billy exhaled smoke into the night and didn’t look over to meet whatever look Goodnight was giving him. 

The topic didn’t come up again until the feeling of Goody’s hands on his skin felt as familiar as the scars.

*-*-*

Billy wakes with the morning, somewhat clear-headed despite the familiar embrace of pain. He listens for a moment - voices and footsteps coming closer. Sitting up isn’t any easier than it had been the night before, but he’s achieved it by the time Emma steps into the shed with a man trailing her who looks even more shocked to see Billy awake than Emma had last night. 

The man, who Emma introduces as a doctor, goes to check on Goodnight’s bandages as Emma sets down some food and answers a few questions.

It’s the third morning since the fight with Bogue went down. Most of the buildings need cleaning up and rebuilding, too few survivors and too many injured housed in anything with minimal structural damage. Yet people are relieved without the specter of Bogue with his iron fist around the town. Everyone was mighty grateful. It’s a foreign state of being for Billy- being on the receiving end of gratitude.

The doctor finishes examining Goody and moves over to Billy who endures the brief handling of his clean wrappings. Prognosis: remarkably better than anyone would have expected, considering. Instruction: rest, little to no movement. No riding till the stitches start to heal properly. Goody would likely wake up sometime soon and the doctor put extra emphasis on the ‘no riding’ instruction considering the head injury. It was a 'don't skip town', but meant in a genuine 'for your own good'.

Eventually, Billy’s left to the quiet of the shed with Goodnight’s breathing for company, no sense of direction, and no need for it.

*-*-*

Goodnight Robicheaux is not a man who likes to dwell on the past, and he's never asked for too many details of how Billy came to America besides the broad strokes.

ChangYi Park, the man who’d someday answer to the name Billy Rocks, had been declared dead after being left in the desert with a dozen bullet holes. It meant that bounty hunters and lesser opportunistic bastards weren’t taking advantage of his injured state to come for his head, but that could only last so long as everyone continued to think he was dead. It’d take too long to recover, to get back into fighting shape from _a dozen gunshot wounds_ to stay comfortably hidden where he was. So he took a job.

Some ambitious idiot had stepped on the wrong foot, betrayed the wrong side, killed the wrong man, then fled across the ocean, utterly underestimating the anger and pettiness of the rich and dangerous. Of course his enemies had the resources to hire a hitman. Considering an unparalleled completion record, they overlooked injury. They were willing to pay a hefty sum, half up front, and for the round trip boat ticket.

ChangYi didn’t know why he’d stayed in the new country after he finished the job and had been wired the rest of his payment. Didn’t know why he bothered with the strange customs and the white men and their strange intolerances for vanity and hedonism for specific vices. 

But for plenty that the land was strange and foreign, there were such comforting easiness of life. The murder of a wealthy new immigrant meant a new bounty, but a tiny fraction of what his head had been worth back in Manchuria. The men coming after him were hilariously inept, usually drunk, and pathologically underestimated him. There was none of that imperialist Japanese bullshit to deal with here, one aggravation gone from his life entirely. And, there was such space for a man feeling aimless to wander. 

He healed up, fought off inept bounty hunters, killed a few, bought some knives, a shiny gun, put the rest of his money in the bank, and headed for the dusty lawless lands that didn’t feel too different from what he’d left behind. 

He picked a new name. One that was easier for his assailants to spit out before they went down under his knife.

It would feel like no great loss if he never made it back home.

*-*-*

Billy spends the morning waiting for Goodnight to wake up.  
In the meantime, he cleans his knives, then his guns, Goody’s guns, both their boots, and sets to work whittling wooden construction pegs for the town- not out of generosity or a goodness-of the heart need to help, but mostly because he likes his hands busy as he thinks of nothing.

It’s after lunch when Goodnight stirs. First with a rasp and a deep exhale, then a quiet moan. Billy puts down the knife and the small chunk of wood in his hands to shift over and help Goodnight swallow a mouthful of water. 

Billy sits back and watches consciousness creep back into Goody’s face. First there’s a grimace of pain, then opening eyes as Goody’s glance darts around before landing on Billy, and the lines of his shoulders relax.

“I didn’t think you wanted to wake up.”  
It’s not often that Billy’s the one to break silences, and Goodnight waits him out.

“Think that bump on your head’s gonna do permanent damage to your face.”

Goody cracks a smile, then coughs, gritting his teeth and wincing afterwards.  
“You gonna leave me for someone prettier?”

“I should have done that ages ago, old man.”  
Billy picks up his knife again, but not the wood. The fingers of his free hands itch.  
He wants to reach out, doesn’t want to give in to that need to feel Goody’s pulse under his fingers to prove to himself that his partner’s alive- doesn’t want to feel skin made weak and dry after so many days unconscious. It’s still strange to care, to be afraid for the first time, of finding the brushing hints of death under his palms. 

Goody takes a moment to crane his neck down, moving so slowly, checking the bandages on his chest, then looks up with a rueful grin.

“Think I’m anywhere near catching up with your collection?”

Billy scoffs. His own bandages are obvious. “Long way to go before you’re anywhere near me.”  
He settles for resting his free hand over Goody’s ankle, over the pant leg and watches Goodnight tiredly blink at the room, readying himself to sit up.

Billy’d handover the leftovers from lunch. Maybe Goody would stay awake long enough to have dinner. They’d both sleep again, early while it was barely dark, and wake up the next morning to eat and rest and heal. And, apparently, they’d live.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shoot the Sun, Hang the Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815501) by [grimcognito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito/pseuds/grimcognito)




End file.
